All the Nodal Offices/Ministries are aware that Government of India has recently launched the "Digital India" campaign to develop a digitally empowered society and to digitally integrate the government departments and the citizens of India. It aims at ensuring the government services are made available to people of India electronically by improving online infrastructure and by increasing Internet connectivity. One of the objectives is to make various Government services on a real time basis on online platform.

PFRDA is also committed to support this promising initiative of Government of India. Efforts are being made by PFRDA to make various NPS related services available on online platform. One such initiative is to make withdrawal process online wherein subscriber can raise withdrawal request using online platform made available on the CRA system. This will make withdrawal process paperless to a great extent and seamless and exit claims of the subscribers can be settled in least possible time

PFRDA had issued circular dated February 25, 2015 making it mandatory for all the Nodal Offices to process the withdrawal claims of their underlying subscribers on the online platform made available on the CRA system from April 1, 2015. However, it has been observed that majority of the withdrawal requests are still being received in physical form (without capturing online withdrawal request) resulting into delay in processing of withdrawal claims of the subscribers.

It has therefore been decided that with effect from April, 1, 2016, only such Withdrawal requests raised on online platform will be accepted at CRA for further processing. Physical Withdrawal Request Forms received at CRA will not be accepted for further processing.

Subscriber/Nodal Office will have to raise Online Withdrawal request in the CRA system by providing the lump-sum % share/annuity % share, Bank details, Nomination details, Annuity Service Provider and Annuity scheme. Subscriber is also required to submit the withdrawal request alongwith annuity purchase form.

The responsibility of verifying the Withdrawal Request Form alongwith the relevant supporting documents will be with the Nodal Office initiating the request online. The Nodal Office will also be responsible for establishing the veracity of the documents / claims submitted at the Nodal Office.

The physical Withdrawal requests are to be forwarded to CRA for storage purpose only. As mentioned earlier, the Physical Withdrawal requests received at CRA without submission of online request will not be entertained by CRA for further processing and will be rejected.

The detail procedure of generating of Claim ID and capturing the Withdrawal request has been provided as Annexure I. The Nodal Offices may contact CRA for further support and guidance.

These are the details of the pfrda orders related to NPS Withdrawal Request through Online - Online CPS Withdrawal Request. In the second part, we have described on how to process the withdrawal request step by step.